The uses of rotating stem mounts are numerous and include overhead supports for vertical clothes racks. This specific application and its type will be used herein to explain the structure and advantages of the rotating stem mount according to the present invention.
The attachment of a clothes rack to the ceiling has been considered by several inventors in the past, to improve on the stability of these racks, basically. Free-standing post-type clothes racks are commonly found behind a door of a building so that people coming into the building can hang their coats, scarves and hats on them. Generally, these racks have a relatively small base as compared to their height and when they are loaded on one side they become unstable. These clothes racks also stand in the way of a person cleaning the floor beneath them, or are often pushed down by young children riding on tricycles and on other similar riding toys.
In order to obviate the use of a free-standing post-type clothes rack and other supports of the like, several models of ceiling-mounted stem-like hangers were developed in the past. Some of these racks remain fixed, while others have the ability to rotate about their vertical axes. Generally, the rotating stem-like racks of the prior art have only one bearing therein and this bearing is adapted to support axial or thrust loads only. Therefore when a side load is applied to the stem of the rack, such as when the rack is loaded on one side only, the bearing housing of the device tilts slightly causing the thrust bearing to separate from its bearing seat. This lateral misalignment of the stem relative to the bearing housing usually causes a resistant surface-to-surface contact between the stem-supporting member and the housing of the device whereby the bearing is no longer effective and the rotation of the stem becomes difficult.
Examples of suspended hangers of the prior art are disclosed in the following documents:
U.S. Pat. No. 1,078,729 issued to L. C. Hill on Nov. 18, 1913;
U.S. Pat. No. 1,246,633 issued to F. Marquart on Nov. 13, 1917;
U.S. Pat. No. 2,051,205 issued to J. B. Estabrook on Aug. 18, 1936;
U.S. Pat. No. 2,174,747 issued to H. C. Hueglin on Oct. 3, 1939;
U.S. Pat. No. 3,362,671 issued to E. P. Johnson on Jan. 9, 1968;
U.S. Pat. No. 3,780,875 issued to L. L Scholl on Dec. 25, 1973.
The design of a ceiling-mounted rotating stem mount is subject to numerous constraints, one of which is aesthetics. The design of wall and ceiling fixtures for modern houses requires that the fasteners holding the fixture in place should be hidden from view. Another required feature of modern wall and ceiling fixtures is that the average handyman must be capable of easily mounting the fixture using basic hand tools.
It is believed that because of these design constraints, basically, the prior art does not contain an easy-to-install and visually-appealing rotating stem mount having a tandem bearing arrangement therein to resist both axial and lateral loads. Therefore, it is believed that a need still exists for a rotating stem mount that allows a frictionless rotation of the stem under various loading conditions.